Identification, Please.

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One of the thorny theoretical game-design quandaries that developers seem to wrestle with in this day and age is whether or not the interactive nature of gaming changes the rules on defining identities. In other words, because the player’s will can be imparted on a flexible world, does that mean that the player also takes ownership of the identity of the hero, and does the author lose license to force personality onto the player?

This is, of course, pseudo-psychological, self indulgent, post-modern, mumbo jumbo and should be avoided as though each word were burning acid from alien blood on the tender flesh of your most sensitive bits. It is a cul-de-sac of circular thinking that more often than not gets well-intentioned developers into trouble and leaves gaping narrative holes and obtuse story elements in its destructive wake.

I consider it audacious and unreasonable to think that video game story telling is so different that suddenly players will be unwilling to empathize with their character unless that character takes on their personality. I appreciate the potential of this new medium, but my experience has been that for now, the more we stick with good old fashioned story telling the better off everyone will be.

When it comes right down to it, I think the problem is that game developers and writers worry far too much about how to make the player identify himself or herself within the character they take on in game. This is a pathway into madness and schlocky conceits that do more damage to my suspension of disbelief than having just avoided the whole problem in the first place.

It seems, for example, exceedingly odd that a man could go through an alien invasion, a dimensional rift, a temporal event and a budding love story without ever saying a word or apparently expressing any kind of emotion beyond stony silence. Yet Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman is the gaming epitome of stubbornly aphasic. I get what they were going after, but honestly, at this point it’s just getting on my nerves.

Would I be any less equipped to identify with Gordon had he a voice to answer people when they ask him a direct freakin’ question? Does Valve imagine that suddenly I will lurch delirious from my computer at the realization that this protagonist and I do not speak with a single voice? Instead they concoct elaborate and tragically obvious narrative structures that always absolve Gordon from having any input save the report of gunfire, and every time it happens I feel myself, in fact, less engaged with the characters.

Obviously, everything else Valve does right in the game overcomes this clumsy execution, but dammit Gordon, just say something already.

BioShock — oh, come on, I’m not actually bringing this game up again, am I? — does a somewhat better job of tackling this thorny issue, but only because the lack of identity is a key element in the game’s larger scope. It is at least willing to stand up and say, “yeah, we did that, and here’s why.”

Still, on my first play-through I bristled at the anonymity and alien-quiet of my character, and even though I feel like the payoff was one of the rare ones worth the price of admission, I have to admit the power of that payoff was in the reveal itself and not any emotional connection I’d built with the character. Jack, the free-will-challenged player character, holds no long term resonance with me, because like Gordon in the end for all the things I know about his situation, I ultimately know virtually nothing about him. He is a husk, a mask I get to wear but one that when I am finished is as easily left flat and empty in the closet as a shirt that never quite fit.

I may be willing to forgive this sin in games like old school Doom or Quake because there were real technical limitations to over-complicating story and really the whole thing was just an excuse to plug ordinance into demons anyway. I never cared who the Space Marine was because he was just a vehicle. Hell, I never even cared about what the ramifications of failure might be. The end of the world? Destruction of the universe? Who cares, there are some hell-spawn over there and they need shootin’. End of story.

That was fine, because the games never asked for anything more. The problem is when games clearly want you to be the vehicle and then as the vehicle care about yourself.

These days everyone is plugging complex and sophisticated worlds into even the most basic shooter. That’s not a bad thing, but if you do that then it seems to me that you have to accept the reality of your narrative. If everyone else in this world you’ve created has a personality, it seems like a damn shame that I’m not given one as well. Just telling me that I should assume their own identity as if it were my own and plug it into their avatar is a cop-out at best and a bungling mistake at worst.

As I play through Mass Effect 2, I am grateful at the depths to which BioWare is willing to develop and explored the player’s character, even if that comes at the expense of sometimes removing the player from having uninterrupted authority. Obviously we are talking about a very different creature here, because there are complex dialogue trees and it would be impossible to imagine this game without a vocal hero, but I know that I will identify with Commander Shepherd long after I’ve stopped clicking that little .exe file.

Apples and oranges, I suppose, but as I look back at games like Deus Ex, Dragon Age, Uncharted or Fallout, a fairly diverse cross-section of the past decade, I find that most stories are enhanced by a well developed hero or anti-hero. It is far better to my mind to be shown a professional crafted story than to be wedged into gimmicks designed to trick me into believing I am actually part of the story.

I'm not. Who I am is not modular, and I can not at will divest myself from the limitation of my own experience and plug it into your world. I am a functioning adult, and no matter how deeply immersed I become, I still know that my character on scree is not me.

Just be yourself is almost always a meaningless platitude, both in real and virtual life. By showing me who my character is, giving him voice and presence in the scenes, you are giving me a far more meaningful connection. Maybe I’m crazy, but I believe that even iconic characters such as Gordon Freeman could have been even more powerful if we had known more about who they are and not just what they do.

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Curious. I was playing a silent protagonist FPS just last night, getting increasingly annoyed by his silence. Resistance 2 surely didn't set the world aflame, but I was thinking about how much I appreciated that the protagonist had a voice, and let it be heard even if it was only to bark orders at NPCs. It gave the notion that I was playing the leader of the Alien Killer Squad credibility.

Good read. I recall feeling the same way about Gordon Freeman and Jack. The only time I've actually felt somewhat attached to my character in any recent FPS game is Halo, specifically ODST. I don't get to imagine that I am there fighting in Africa, but nor do I care.

Seattle, where the weather is unlikely to kill you in an interesting fashion.

I've been thinking about this too - just posted in the ME2 Snap Judgement thread about how much more enjoyable it is to pick up the game with the same character I played in the first game. Not because I get to continue with the same loot and character progression I made in ME1, but because I get to continue the same role-play. And part of what made ME1 so enjoyable was role-playing Jon Shepard as the ultimate devil-may-care badass.

It's a rare game indeed that makes me pause before performing an in-game action that would break character, but ME2 achieved that in the first couple of hours. Giving me back the character that I'd already invested tens of hours in means that I don't have to spend that vast chunk of time establishing who my Shepard is.

It's the kind of thing that I wish more games could do, while simultaneously realising that outside of a narrative-focussed sequel, it can't be done.

Having just finished Dead Space, I was thinking about this. They created a character, gave him a name, gave him a love story, then had him remain mute the entire game. His personality only comes out a tiny bit if you read his descriptions of mission objectives, which jars you out of the game a bit.

One of the most impressive to me: Republic Commando. They took four generic clones with only numbers for identification and made them all unique with individual personalities. Gifting life and personality to almost the epitome of generic soldiers. Amazing.

Hypatian wrote:

Stone thongs are almost as important to preventing the spread of elves as lead toys are.

This is one - perhaps, the only - way in which I felt Mass Effect was superior to Dragon Age.

Shepard is a fully realized character, with real dialogue. You steer the course of the conversation, but the actors (actors, as there are complete renditions of both male and female versions of the character) impart nuance into the responses that's absent with non-voiced protagonists. I'd choose certain options just to see what Shepard would do.

Obviously we are talking about a very different creature here, because there are complex dialogue trees and it would be impossible to imagine this game without a vocal hero, but I know that I will identify with Commander Shepherd long after I’ve stopped clicking that little .exe file.

Are you sure that the trees themselves are really that special, though? Admittedly I haven't played ME 2 yet, but my recollection of the first game is that the trees aren't more complex than, say, Fallout 3 or Dragon Age, they're just better due to the acting that backs them up.

I'm with you 100% on this one. I'm not sure the concept of a cipher main character is inherently flawed, but certainly the execution has been up to this point. Power, brother! But then, I still play adventure games, so maybe I'm just a freak.

I love it when you're playing a game like Mass Effect and the dialogue tree option you choose isn't what the character actually says, but rather a summation that they then take and put into character. It almost feels like more of a directorial role at that point, but it's becoming a more common approach, and I like where it's going. It really adds to the sense that you're working on a fully-developed character.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

A giant Cthulu alien just threw the top of Big Ben at Abraham Lincoln's airship.

Seattle, where the weather is unlikely to kill you in an interesting fashion.

Minarchist wrote:

I love it when you're playing a game like Mass Effect and the dialogue tree option you choose isn't what the character actually says, but rather a summation that they then take and put into character.

This.

Dialog trees where the actor is merely reading the exact line that you just chose annoys the hell out of me. I've just read what my dude's about to say, I don't need to hear it - the game isn't giving me any new input - it's just making me wait longer to get to the next bit. The ME solution makes me interested to know how Shepard's going to voice the intent that I've just given him.

I love it when you're playing a game like Mass Effect and the dialogue tree option you choose isn't what the character actually says, but rather a summation that they then take and put into character. It almost feels like more of a directorial role at that point, but it's becoming a more common approach, and I like where it's going. It really adds to the sense that you're working on a fully-developed character.

Well put Minarchist... "directorial role". I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was hilariously surprised when my Shepard wound up and knocked out a TV news reporter as a result of me choosing "This interview is over!" from a dialog tree.

I was expecting a hand-blocking-the-camera-lens approach that you see when felons are on their way into the courtroom. In the end I was more than a little shocked at the game's interpretation of my choice, but I had to begrudgingly admit that ME was able to one-up my own level of assholery quite well. And yes, it felt very much like I was directing Christian Bale as he went on an impromptu rampage.

He (I?) was out of control for just a split second, which was actually rather thrilling.

Having just finished Dead Space, I was thinking about this. They created a character, gave him a name, gave him a love story, then had him remain mute the entire game. His personality only comes out a tiny bit if you read his descriptions of mission objectives, which jars you out of the game a bit.

One of the most impressive to me: Republic Commando. They took four generic clones with only numbers for identification and made them all unique with individual personalities. Gifting life and personality to almost the epitome of generic soldiers. Amazing.

One reason I love Prey is because you are very much not a silent protagonist. Honestly, Tommy is like a whiny teenager, but you get to empathise with him in the course of the game as he tries to save his girlfriend.

And agreed on Republic Commando, it's very well done.

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." ― H.L. Mencken

This is, of course, pseudo-psychological, self indulgent, post-modern, mumbo jumbo and should be avoided as though each word were burning acid from alien blood on the tender flesh of your most sensitive bits. It is a cul-de-sac of circular thinking that more often than not gets well-intentioned developers into trouble and leaves gaping narrative holes and obtuse story elements in its destructive wake.

That was more or less my reaction to graduate school (minus the story and narrative elements, substituting them with anthropologic, political, and cultural navel gazing).

Another great read, thanks.

Also, like many others have said -- I am really enjoying playing through ME2 with my ME character, and am already trying to read ahead to make sure I make the best choices for my ME3 import:)

This is, of course, pseudo-psychological, self indulgent, post-modern, mumbo jumbo and should be avoided as though each word were burning acid from alien blood on the tender flesh of your most sensitive bits. It is a cul-de-sac of circular thinking that more often than not gets well-intentioned developers into trouble and leaves gaping narrative holes and obtuse story elements in its destructive wake.

I take that as a fault not due to thinking about these things, but in failing to make a decision on them.

Hypatian wrote:

Words... are a big deal.

Enix wrote:

The only way writers are going to get better is if they get some decent damned editing.

I can't do much more than nod in agreement. It's rare that I've had the satisfaction of coming back to a character that Mass Effect 2 has given me. For me personally, the only instance that comes close is Solid Snake through all his zany misadventures. Others would probably cite Nathan Drake. Probably no coincidence that all are fully voiced and very well-realized protagonists.

My question is: what would you do about Gordon Freeman? Have him start talking in the next game and explain it away as laryngitis? The fact that he got tired of the strong, silent type act? He was a mute and they finally gave him implants that allow him to speak? Remake all the other Half-Life games George Lucas style and retrofit a ton of 80's action flick one-liners into them?

He (I?) was out of control for just a split second, which was actually rather thrilling.

I think "He" is appropriate here. The one brilliant thing that Bioware did with Mass Effect's dialog system was adding a level of abstraction to the dialog choices. In doing that, Shepard is effectively changed from your in-game avatar to a much more fully fleshed out character. You're not choosing the exact phrases and words that he uses, instead just giving vague instructions on what to do. That makes moments like the one you mentioned even more unexpected and meaningful, because you don't know that it's coming.

Valve wrote:

“Also, the game will be even better,” they added, missing an historic opportunity to create the first product delay press release to mention that a product is being delayed to make it worse.

I'm not. Who I am is not modular, and I can not at will divest myself from the limitation of my own experience and plug it into your world. I am a functioning adult, and no matter how deeply immersed I become, I still know that my character on screen is not me.

I definitely understand the appreciation for a well realized character. I too really enjoy the Sheppard Bioware has crafted in Mass Effect, and the tweaks I can apply to her personality (My Sheppard 2.0 has become something of an alcoholic with a mean streak since her return).

But that doesn't mean that any character without such fleshing out, a "mask" as you call it, is totally devoid. This is the true essence of "role-playing" - you craft the backstory and personality yourself, and play it out. No one is saying that the character on the screen is you - they're just saying that you get to invent it and have it be whatever you want. It might be an acquired taste, and I can understand the preference for a character that's fleshed out for you, but that doesn't mean such a design decision is without merit.

The best examples of what you're talking about (which you strangely don't mention, as they are perhaps better comparisons to Mass Effect and Dragon Age) are Bethesda games, where you are expected to flesh out your character in this way. I actually didn't enjoy Fallout 3's clunky Karma-scale-as-morality-definition device, but I really enjoyed how Morrowind and Oblivion provided me with the opportunity to construct a personality from scratch and live out that character's story in a consistent way.

Half-Life is a wierd example - I think Valve is keeping Gordon as the silent protagonist just to stay consistent with their decade-long theme, at this point. They've shown their interest in stronger characterization pretty consistently in the L4D series. Gordon and Jack are also kind of doing it half-assed - they are providing a backstory and a linear plot, but no characterization - it doesn't really give the player any room to flesh it out on their own.

If you're going to go for a blank slate character, either go big or go home.

It seems, for example, exceedingly odd that a man could go through an alien invasion, a dimensional rift, a temporal event and a budding love story without ever saying a word or apparently expressing any kind of emotion beyond stony silence. Yet Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman is the gaming epitome of stubbornly aphasic. I get what they were going after, but honestly, at this point it’s just getting on my nerves.

...

That was fine, because the games never asked for anything more. The problem is when games clearly want you to be the vehicle and then as the vehicle care about yourself.

Are the Half-Life games really asking for more than Doom or Quake in regards to storytelling, though? Even though the Half-Life storyline delves much deeper into exposition and an overarching storyline, your route through that storyline is still straight as an arrow and there's not really reason to even consider a different path, since the alternative to your actions within the HL universe essentially boils down to "submit to the aliens and/or die."

Also, this may be a bit of a naive viewpoint, but I'm reluctant to call Valve out for "laziness" (my words, not yours) on Gordon's silence when the Half-Life storyline is still in progress. The game provides the necessary amount of lampshade hanging to let the player know that Gordon's silence is recognized as a contextual part of the game's world. And since Gordon is hardly a normal character anyway -- why would the G-Man be so focused on him otherwise? -- that recognition makes it seem somehow like a reasonable characterization that remains within the rules of the game's depicted reality, even after four games have passed.

Of course, if the whole thing wraps up in five (ten?) years with nary an ounce of justification or resolution for that silence, then I will join in and share a sense of disappointment. In my eyes, it will have been a wasted opportunity.

For example, you counterpoint the Half-Life saga with BioShock in the article, but I actually feel like that game is a much more egregious example of your complaint. Half-Life at least openly acknowledges the weirdness of the one-sided interactions taking place; BioShock bombards Jack with one-sided directives from a half-dozen people throughout the game, all without expecting or even anticipating any kind of reciprocation or response.

Spoiler:

The "big reveal" you allude to takes care of the identity of the protagonist -- and it even cleverly "explains" some of Jack's actions to that point -- but it unfolds before the player through a face-to-face conversation with Andrew Ryan where Jack essentially stands, mouth agape, in complete silence. It never justifies the lack of a response.

Sure, part of that confrontation comes through direct manipulation, but Jack has technically been manipulated the whole way through the game ("would you kindly" this, "would you kindly" that) and we've still heard his voice: his wheezing when he made his way up the steps to Rapture in the beginning, his scream when he injected his first plasmid. Why is he so silent now, when the context for his entire existence has been completely turned upside down?

That being said...

wordsmythe wrote:

The article wrote:

This is, of course, pseudo-psychological, self indulgent, post-modern, mumbo jumbo and should be avoided as though each word were burning acid from alien blood on the tender flesh of your most sensitive bits. It is a cul-de-sac of circular thinking that more often than not gets well-intentioned developers into trouble and leaves gaping narrative holes and obtuse story elements in its destructive wake.

I take that as a fault not due to thinking about these things, but in failing to make a decision on them.

I think there may actually be a practical issue at play here, not just a failure to think or make a decision.

There's one niggling issue with perception in first-person games, especially those with an "unbroken" perspective like Half-Life or BioShock; there's nothing forcing you to look Alyx or Eli Vance in the eye during a conversation, but there's also nothing other than cues in the environment to signal where your attention should go or where the voice you're hearing is coming from.

If your FPS character were to "speak" without explicitly issuing a command to speak, there's an immediate sense of disorientation: where did that voice come from? There's no external cue in the environment, no feedback outside of any possible responses from other characters...and, as a result, there's an immediate dissociation, a breakdown of any immersion that the game is trying to create.

Given the choice between that dissociation and a simple narrative conceit, which allows the player to assume a more invested role within the storyline, but in a deliberately contrived manner, I might actually choose the latter if I wanted to make an FPS.

The strength of the first-person perspective is direct involvement, in my opinion, and breaking perspective and removing the player from the role -- making their involvement more indirect -- essentially concedes immersion and raises questions. "If I'm just steering some other person, rather than assuming a role, then why not bring me out to third person perspective, where I would have a better view of my surroundings?"

If Half-Life didn't have a silent protagonist, we wouldn't have Freeman's Mind. And I don't think I would want to live in a world like that.

I find that most stories are enhanced by a well developed hero or anti-hero. It is far better to my mind to be shown a professional crafted story than to be wedged into gimmicks designed to trick me into believing I am actually part of the story.

I agree with this. Games where I play "me", like Fallout 3, always seem to me like I'm operating in a bubble. I can run around the world and interact with everything, but there always feels like there's some barrier separating the world from me, or reinforce the reality that I'm on the couch but the world is Over There.

Contrast that with games that give me defined and motivated characters to play, like Ezio Auditore or Garrett, and then, forgive the metaphor, I feel like they're a glove I can put on and actually touch the gameworld. Obviously I should mention Sheppard here, but I'm not so convinced that a character whose talky bits we can direct is a higher degree of identification.

It's a bit schizophrenic, really, but something I have no trouble reconciling in the middle of play. Garrett is a personality separate from me, so what he says surprises and usually amuses me, but doesn't disorientate me, as Ozymandias suggests it might. And at the same time, make no mistake, I am Garrett the master thief when I play.

Edit: Or maybe I'm more like Joe-Jim from Orphans of the Sky.

Gravey, I'm never sure, on a scale of 1-10, just how serious you are when you post. – Minarchist

Apples and oranges, I suppose, but as I look back at games like Deus Ex, Dragon Age, Uncharted or Fallout, a fairly diverse cross-section of the past decade, I find that most stories are enhanced by a well developed hero or anti-hero. It is far better to my mind to be shown a professional crafted story than to be wedged into gimmicks designed to trick me into believing I am actually part of the story.

Well, I hate to say it, but this describes exactly why I don't find the narrative of World of Warcraft to be particularly compelling (except when compared against other MMOs to date).

I can't wait to see what Bioware has in store for that genre, by the way...

As much as I enjoyed many oldschool excellent RPGs, I empathized with The Nameless One from Planescape Torment the most, even though I still much enjoyed elements of other games

The game revolved around trying to find out more about yourself, and even though you never learn the true name, I still had a sense of gratification in the end, when you talk to the original one, and your character restores a sense of his identity

I always felt Planescape was just a bit better than any of those other oldschool RPGs, in terms of characters. The action was nowhere as frenzied as many of the classic D&D titles, but the superb writing just made me care about the plot, and the world

I think for many the issue is that they play games to role play. To become a certain person. In a game where choices truly do abound (and those games are very, very rare), a player can live out an alternate life.

However, in most games, the requisite narrative forces you down such a narrow path that role playing is given only lip service - your choices are the same choices millions of other gamers will make. Given that scenario, I would rather have a fun, fleshed out person - give me the evil Jedi and I'll act evil. Give me "good" or "bad" and I'll choose good because that's just me.

Give me Duke Nukem and I'll run around tipping strippers and swearing a lot. Give me Master Chief and when presented with overwhelming odds, I'll grin inside my reflective visor and charge into the fray. Give me Ezio from Assassin's Creed and I'll grin with delight as I hop into ladie's rooms and get chased out again the next morning.

On the other hand, take Modern Warfare 2. All my protagonists are identical, interchangeable. Sure, there is a limited "backstory" but everybody who plays those characters must walk the same path, shoot the same bad guys, and watch the same story that I did. When that's the case, why make the character blank?

muttonchop wrote:

If you strike me down, I shall become more fabulous than you can possibly imagine.

So what's the future hold for protagonists? Would you ever want to play a game sophisticated enough to respond to your natural voice, letting you truly be the character? Would you just feel weird talking to computer characters? Or is that asking for too large an emotional investment of the game player?

The identity question also makes me think about the role-playing question--how should games handle a player's actions when he/she commands his character to do something just to see the ramifications, rather than acting out the character's role?

For example, if you're playing a superhero like Superman, and you decide you want to kill civilians--that's not something Superman would do, so should the game allow it? If it doesn't, then the player runs up against those ludic blockades that could destroy the suspended disbelief. On the other hand, the game really has nowhere to go if the player starts commanding Superman to kill civilians, and no one could really stop Superman without kryptonite--I could see this taking the game a bizarre direction where the bad guy becomes the hero, but to what end, really?

As far as identifying with a character goes, I'm okay with either the established (I'll shy away from saying "well developed" since most games don't rate that description) character or the mute cypher as long as I can empathize with the character in some way.

It's just easier to do that with cipher characters than for others.

The space marine in Doom is easy: I'm the last guy on a moon orbiting Mars and I'm surrounded by things that want to kill me. I can get behind that.

The mute Chelle from Portal, same thing. I have a portal gun, and I want to get the heck out of this madhouse.

Fallout 3 doesn't necessarily offer a cipher, but it does offer a blank that I can put my own personality into. I put a lot of thought into all of the conversation trees, trying to figure out how I think I would have reacted to the conversation I'm having if I were in that world.

With more fleshed out characters, it's a bit harder to pick a game to play. I have to be able to agree with the character more often than not, such that even if the character is a big jerk I can still get behind what he or she is doing. Wet is a good recent example: Rubi is a pretty unlikable character, but she did a job and should get paid. It sets off my justice sensor, and allows me to justify playing a bad person because she's righting a wrong.

A more clear cut example is Infamous (good path, because playing the bad path might give you red lightning, but it makes the story completely incoherent). Cole has a clear cut personality, and I can get behind what he's doing. Even as the Bad-Cole, his actions make sense in a pure self-preservation, self-interested kind of way (evil side missions like killing cops excluded).

By contrast, I pretty much don't play anything by Rockstar, because whether the character is a complete cipher (GTA3) or a Russian immigrant (GTA4), I can't justify what I'm doing in the game in any way, shape or form.

That makes me weird, and it also makes me miss out on a lot of the new hotness because the game developers have been cranking out games where you kill angels (Bayonetta, Darksiders), or murder innocent people (Prototype) for a while now.

I'd almost rather game developers stop trying to tell a rich story and focus on fun gameplay. The Club is a good example of that old arcade mentality-- the story is so thin that I can justify the action to myself in the same way I can justify the action in Doom; I'm a guy in a room with a ton of other guys who want to kill me, so I'm going to kill them right back. And quickly.

Likewise Katamari Damacy. Virtually no story there, but the gameplay is just fun and I can go back to levels and play them over and over just to improve my score.

Note I said ALMOST. I still want games like Bioshock and Fallout 3. But I would like to see more of that old arcade mentality come back. Blowing stuff up for points never gets old for me.

I remember very cleary cocking my shotgun consolingly when Alyx's dad was killed. When Dr. Magnusson first appeared in person, I did not unload my magnum into his stupid, asshole brain. Look, the dialogue has a system in Half Life that might be hard to find at first. It's two shots for yes, one for no.